


Fifteen

by jikanet_tanaka



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Human Outsider (Dishonored), Post-Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Spoilers, death of the outsider spoilers, dishonored is not about murders oh no, it's about assassins bumbling through parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26568331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jikanet_tanaka/pseuds/jikanet_tanaka
Summary: A grim-faced assassin takes in a wary, broken youth.Because time, as the Outsider once said, repeats in the same unending patterns.Little ficlet that takes place after DotO, 'cause that ending gave me all the feels.
Relationships: Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster & The Outsider, Daud & Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	Fifteen

Her name is Billie Lurk.

She isn’t be the first street kid Daud has met who’s traded her birth name for something more to her liking. As a boy, he collected his fair share of monikers all across Serkonos. Daud never had any use for them. His mother gave him a name that came from her long-lost homeland, and it was the only gift of hers he brought with him to Dunwall.

Billie Lurk’s eyes remains fixed on him as she scarfs down her can of brined hagfish. She eats only like only one who has starved before can eat, slurping and licking her fingers clean. Daud wonders when was the last time she had a proper meal.

“How are you settling in?” he asks her. Outside, a storm is raging, and rain drips from the ceiling. Winter is creeping up on them, and along with it the wettest and dreariest days of the year.

She shrugs. “I’m doing fine.” With a snort, she adds, “Nice place you got, by the way.”

He doesn’t chide her for that barb, and simply chooses to observe her. Someone actually gave her a blanket. Daud’s Whalers are hardened killers, down to a man, and sometimes he forgets that they can be decent people. The kid’s scowling at him in a way that’s quite impressive, though all Daud can think is how absurd she looks, all wrapped up in that moth-eaten thing.

It also makes him realize how small she is. How young she must be.

“How old are you?” Daud says, slightly frowning. He’s hired young before, but never under the age of sixteen. This girl looks like she’s thirteen, fourteen. Or maybe fifteen. It’s not like Daud knows enough about kids to tell.

“Why do you care?” she answers between two mouthfuls. “I’ll learn the trade, I swear. I’ll put in more work than the rest of your guys, just you see.”

Daud remains silent. Half of his men find echoes of their past selves in those wary brown eyes. The other half sees her as a mouthy brat and a liability. None so far has proposed to hand her over to the City Watch, where she would certainly fetch a pretty sum. Kid already has the murder of a duke’s son under her belt. That was enough to earn her a grudging sort of respect from Daud’s people.

“We’ll see,” Daud says. “Don’t take it too personally if you fail. You might not be cut up for it.”

She stares back at him without flinching. No, Daud thinks. Maybe it’s him who finds a reflection of his youth in her gaze. He must have been the same age as her when an unscrupulous patron ripped him from his home in Karnaca and brought him to Dunwall. After cutting the man’s throat when he’d been asleep, Daud escaped to the streets, finding himself unable to find a boat back to Serkonos. He did well enough on his own; he couldn’t see why she would fare any worse.

Except…

Except sometimes it doesn’t mean anything that you have wits or talent in a place like Dunwall’s underworld. Sometimes you just have shit luck. The streets chewed on and spat out urchins like her by the hundreds. If Daud sent her away, she could end up dead in some gutter in a matter of months—of _days_ , even.

Daud’s frown deepens. That shouldn’t be his problem, and yet…

She coughs and wraps the blanket tighter around herself. Daud finds himself itching to move from his seat. Maybe he should find her some better quarters. He’s used to the piercing chill of the Gristollian winter, but she’s just a kid. How stupid it would be, to go through all the trouble of training her, only to have her catch her death in the cold?

“I’ve killed people before,” she says. “It’s not that hard.”

“How did you pull it off? Killing the duke’s son?”

Her face twists, and she bares her teeth. “I drove a _fuckin’_ stake through his eye. He deserved it, he did. He killed _Deirdre_.” Her breath starts to hitch as the words keep pouring out. “We were just running down the street, we didn’t see their carriage. Deirdre didn’t do _nothin’_ , and that guy just takes a swing at her, and I had nothing to stop the bleeding, and, and—”

This time, Daud does leave his chair. He doesn’t reach to pat the kid’s shoulder; instead, he just holds his hand up, and says, “Calm down. I get it. He deserved it. All of them do.”

She sniffs and blinks the tears away. Soon, her eyes are filled with cold fury again. “They do,” she says, softly. “You’ll teach me how to make them pay, won’t you. _Won’t you?_ ”

Yes, Daud thinks as he locks gazes with her. That anger is more familiar to him than the songs his mother sang to him when he was a boy. “If you’re willing to learn, yes.”

“They say the Outsider gave you his secrets. He’s never listened when _I_ asked for help. But you’ll teach me magic, yeah?”

Daud grows still, remembering a young man visiting shrines, searching for hidden runes, crawling out of death’s embrace over and over, just to get a glance of the black-eyed bastard. The Outsider had looked into the hate-filled heart of that youth, and rewarded him with the ability to impose his will upon the world. Daud still wonders why the Mark burns his left hand. The older he grows, the more he sees it as the cruel joke of a bored child.

Why else would someone like Daud gets his heart's desire while others died alone and unmourned? Why else would the Outsider ignore young Billie Lurk’s pleas for mercy or justice? Why else would he never answer her prayers for vengeance?

Daud meets her gaze, sees the uncertainty hidden under all that bluster. No one cared for his mother when she had been stolen from her home as a girl, and no one cared for Daud when he’d been torn from her loving arms.

Who would watch over the girl sitting across from him?

“Alright,” he says, nodding. “I’ll teach you.”

She grins, and he doesn’t smile, not quite, but his scowl does soften.

* * *

His name is—

Well, he hasn’t shared his name with Billie. She can’t exactly blame the kid. Four thousand years ago, people in power ripped his name away to bind him to the abyss. Billie expects that he’ll carry this secret to the grave.

His _grave_.

The Outsider can die— _will_ die, someday. She freed a god from his eternal shackles, all to please a dead man she loved and hated in equal measure.

The god in question is sitting across from her on a dirty mattress, wrapped in a faded quilt. He’s also drenched to the bone. Stupid kid has a fascination with the rain; at the first signs of a storm, he tends to bolt outside, opening his arms to the skies like a lunatic.

And now he’s sneezing and coughing, the little shit. It gnaws at Billie in a way she didn’t think possible. How stupid it would be, to go through all the trouble of saving his dumb ass, only to have him catch her death in the rain?

He eats his can of jellied eels with a strange sort of urgency, even if, in his own words, it's the foulest thing he’s ever tasted. Billie knows the signs of a childhood spent in starvation when she sees them. It’s strange to think of a god living as a hungry urchin. Then again, the skinny, pasty-faced brat in front of her looks anything but divine.

“How old were you?” Billie says. “Back then, I mean. When they killed you.”

He’d been a kid, that much she knew. That cult plucked him from the streets, feeding and clothing and pampering him before slitting his throat. He had been young enough, certainly, to fall for such an obvious trap. Or maybe he’d just been desperate. He wouldn’t be the first unfortunate soul to ignore gut instinct in exchange for a decent meal.

Green eyes stare unblinking at her. To her surprise, a corner of his mouth twitches, as if he’s attempting a smile. “Does it matter?” After a sizable silence, he adds, “You’re older than he was. When he first found you.”

Billie catches the reprimand before it leaves her lip. Not long ago, she would have snapped at him and asked him to stop being such a cryptic little shit. Now she knows better. Maybe speaking that way reminded him of a time where he’d been a god, and not some little snot eating out of the trash.

“You mean Daud?” Billie asks, and he actually smiles this time. “He seemed so old to me back then. So sure of himself. Like he had it all figured it.”

She remembers joking with the other Whalers that the old man probably came out of the womb with gravel in his throat and a scowl etched on his ugly mug. In hindsight, Daud’s flaws are evident now. It’s easy to see the little cracks that widened into a great chasm when he plunged that knife into the belly of Jessamine Kaldwin and found himself unable to kill in the aftermath. Back then, Billie had thought him weak, for being so easily broken.

A sob nearly escapes her mouth then and there, and she pushes down the wave of grief before it overwhelms her. The boy watches her carefully, chewing through his mouthful of jellied eels.

“He’s doubted plenty of things over the course of his life,” he says, and Billie berates herself for not hiding her distress well enough. “But he died certain that you grew to be a better person than he was.”

Billie looks away, snorting to keep herself from crying or smiling or _both_. Stupid old man. Daud had been more sentimental in these last few weeks than in all the ten years she ran with him. It’s an odd comfort, finally knowing that he had cared for her even when he’d been a prickly asshole barking orders at her.

She glances at the boy seated in front of her, wondering if she will ever feel something for him other than pity and disgust. She set out on this stupid mission to kill him to give Daud a measure of peace. Instead, the old man died alone, and she was stuck with this weird little shitstain—the source of all evil according to polite society. Billie’s not sure she enjoys the result of this exchange. Some fifteen years ago, she would have kicked the kid out of her life, laughing all the while.

And now, she’s not exactly wiser, but she knows better. She knows she would not have survived those first few years without sweet Deirdre. And she knows she would have met a violent end if not for the old man who believed so wholeheartedly she would succeed in pulling off the impossible, simply because she was 'his Billie'.

In those moments when all hopes seemed lost, someone cared for her.

Why couldn’t she do the same for boy sitting across from her?

“Say, kid,” she tells him. “How about I get you something nicer to eat?”

She nearly laughs at the hopeful look showing on his face.


End file.
